No way in hell I’d trust just one backup method for my data.

A 6 TB drive is less than $100 on Amazon and two cloud backups is like $30 extra a year.

This is exactly why I look at companies and corporations with a side-eye of doubt when they claim to have some sort of “do not be evil” motto baked into thier company culture.

It doesn’t matter if a gigantic company has a hundred philanthropy focused CEOs, all ot takes is one greedy or evil one to destroy a company’s dogma

After the investors, managers, and profiteers taste easy money, they will continue to demand to be fed that blood flavored stew.

Once that happens, they either need to be lobotomized or put down for the good of all lest those who are not in the know continue to put money into the frothing imitation it has become.

That is like saying that the screwdriver is the most over-rated tool in the tool box.

Each tool has a place and a usage. AI is just another tool in toolbox that is used to get things done.

I’m using my steam deck right now as a gaming PC while moving across America.

It works really well. I got a dock from Amazon that gives me the ports to plug in my gaming mouse and keyboard. I can do HDMI out to the hotel TV or, better yet, lead out one USB-c cord to a fantastic portable monitor.

I only ran into two minor issues. The first is getting enough juice to the steam deck and heat. Both can be easily solved with a good fast charging station and better air flow (I use this tiny hyper fan and have had zero issues in 90 degree Florida winter weather).

Of note, I dual boot with Windows 11. It’s a bloated mess of an operating system, but I want to use certain mods and programs that windows only. Plus, I’m not tied down to only steam games. The addition of being able to run nearly everything that’s Windows compatible takes the deck up a level, I feel.

The best way to get the most out of the Windows environment is to run a debloater admin tool, which removes unnecessary programs on Windows 10+ systems. The difference between the performance is shocking, making it pretty much required for usage. It’s not too hard to use, too.

The best part of it all is that you still have a stream deck at the end of the day. You don’t have to do any hardware mods. You can pick the deck up and walk out of the house and still have the gaming PC with you.

Everyone should be using the Facebook addon “Facebook Purity” if they are still using the platform. I’ve been using it for over a decade and I can’t stand using Facebook without it…

They are always a few steps ahead of Facebook and work well with other blockers.

Not only that, you can block specific parts of Facebook, not just the adverts. You can block the shorts, people you know, groups, keywords, and even whole topics.

You can change settings, like how you see your feed and it will stay changed.

Changing the font size, type, spacing in addition a bunch of color and night mode options are just icing on the cake.

In my professional opinion, it’s the only way of working with that platform is not harmful to one’s sanity.

I have been using WUB, and some other extremely helpful tools that this company makes, for a few years at this point.

The part that I LOVE about WUB is how complete and exhaustive the shut-off is for the ease of use.

There’s no editing files, no editing anything, just download and press a button to turn on update blocking (while protecting the services that could mess up by blocking). Press another button to unblock everything as good as a fresh install.

It’s as if it was never blocked when updates are toggled on, and it’s as if Windows update is completely removed with the blocking is toggled on.

My alts are always on my same name. It helps me not have to remember, but it helps me to compartmentalize.

I have one over on lemmy.world that I made when RiF went down and it pointed to that instance. ‘Reddit is Fun’ was my trusted app of choice for so long that I figured that I’d go with their recommendation.

That mindset was apparently shared with a lot of people, and lemmy.world became overcrowded and unusable every other day for a while due to traffic. That’s when I read that one should get registered at a closer and/or smaller instance in order to have better service.

That’s when I moved over to SDF’s shockingly fast lemmy instance.

I’d love to see smaller game devs have a federated presence with their content.

Right now, I only use Reddit to keep up with game devs who only post game content and updates on their own subreddit.

Microsoft PowerToys is a fantastic program if you like to tweak your experience with Windows.

It lets you do things like set up individual zones within your monitor that act like picture in picture or another monitor. It has a robust color picker, which helps greatly when it comes to photoshop and template creation. I also use the text extractor very often to extract text from pictures, which it copies to the clipboard.

The best, and technically the worst, is it lets you change settings that you can’t normally do in Windows.

While it could get someone YOLO adminning in trouble, thankfully it has a lot of warnings before you mess things up too badly.

Those are the features I use, but there are too many useful features to name in one go.

Here’s the link to get it in the Microsoft Store

WUB or Windows Update Blocker.

It’s one of the first things I put on a new after the initial Windows update.

It safely turns and completely turns off Windows updating and the services involved with updates.

It’s practically a necessity if you use a metered or paid internet connection, or connect your laptop to a cell phone for an internet connection via a hotspot.

Windows doesn’t listen to its own settings about metered connections and if it deems something worthy of killing your data plan for the month, it’ll do so without your knowledge.

The best part is that when you’re ready to download critical updates or something from the Windows store (Whatsapp, Minecraft, Power Tools, etc.) then it’s as simple as a button press to reactivate updates without restart.

Everyone should be using the Facebook addon “Facebook Purity” if they are still using the platform. I’ve been using it for over a decade and I can’t stand using Facebook without it…

Not only does it work better than most adblocks, but you can completely move, remove, and restyle features.

It’s the only way of working with that platform is not harmful to one’s sanity.

It’s too bad it’s not the US mint. It might help inflation.

Where’s Jeeves when we need him? I’d ask him but…

It wouldn’t shock me if they removed ublock origin from the chrome store

Unless it’s something that you are a super uber fan, avoid buying a game before it comes out.

It saves a lot of heartaches and headaches.

Plus, in today’s world… why pre order? It’s not like a game will run out of copies…

That’s the same reason I don’t complain about having to pay taxes for schools, even if I don’t have a child in school right now.

I did telecom work about 5 years ago

It was shocking the amount of area that depends on a low-quality copper wire infrastructure.

I don’t know if that changed in 5 years, but companies are going to have a hard time getting that replaced nationwide

I wonder if killbots would be better than the Jem’hadar. Certainly a Jem’killbot cyborg would be better than both.

I’m sure the Dominion put that to the test at some point.

Though with the power of the dominion, it wouldn’t shock me if they invented the borg that way and the time shenanigans happened

It sounds like it would be a net-positive energy wise if they installed holographic emitters in the mess hall. Not only could they have one less person eating resources BUT they can greatly improve crew moral.

Then they can have a rotating roster of the best cooks, swapping between cultures or even cram all of that knowledge into a single hologram a’la the EMH.

While cooking is a complex chemistry exhibit that requires a lot of talent, it shouldn’t take anywhere close to the amount of processing power an EMH does. It just doesn’t need to know tens of thousands of procedures on dozens of alien species.

At most, it needs to know the equivalent of ‘not to overly kneed biscuits’ and ‘it’s a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake’

I could see Janeway being based and using it that way

It could also solve the need for clones of the Vorta. The Dominion could just pop another one out of the buffer and not have to depend on cloning facilities.